After my guided tour to the Katla glacier, I visited Skógafoss, one of the biggest waterfalls in Iceland. It was super crowded, but there was a beautiful full-length rainbow and a flight of stairs to get a top-down view of the falls. The stairs felt difficult for some reason and I took my time, shielding my core against the wind with my fleece vest. My cotton leggings were getting a bit wet from the waterfall spray, which wasn't a big deal since I wasn't planning on staying long at the top. But then I realized there was a whole hiking trail along the top that wound along the rushing Skógá River...
I didn't feel like walking all the way back to the car to get my rain pants, but soon I was snagged: the farther I walked, the less I wanted to turn back, because now I'd seen how much I would have missed if I turned around earlier. Hiking without first looking at a map heightened the feeling of "presence" and thrill, testing how far I'd push myself before backing away--because what if the trail ended in just five more minutes, or ten? What else could I see in fifteen?
I hiked along the GORGEOUS, mostly flat path under a grey, spitting sky for maybe 20 or 30 min, the whole time freezing my ass off, angrily swatting icy clumps of knotty hair out of my face as the wind pushed me to the side. I cursed the wind more than once, then resorted to defeated laughs. It was evident I was going mad, so I finally "gave in" and turned around. My leggings were soaked and were so cold I was worried they’d become frozen stumps, so I sort of ran some to keep the blood moving.
When I finally made it back down to my car, I pulled off in an empty parking lot and stripped off my pants and put on my dry other ones I brought, cursing the small, cramped space: it's so hard to change in the driver's seat. I was still cold and starving and just wanted to get back to Bren's cozy home, but first I stopped at the small town where Ivar’s sister lives to go to the grocery store and bought three packages of delicious creme-filled cookies to take home. I went to the local artisan store afterward and bought an Icelandic sweater, then stopped at the bakery in Hella to get a few treats and a fresh loaf of bread (we go through one loaf in 1-2 days).
Brenna welcomed me home with a cheery, warm hi. She was cooing and singing and speaking sweetly to a bright-eyed Katla on her hip, and the kitchen was filled with the aroma of chickpea-spinach-curry stew. She informed me then that the hike I just went on was part of the 10-hour hike (Fimmvörðuháls) she's been telling me about ("you have to prepare for it")–apparently it’s one of the most dangerous hikes in Iceland, because the weather can turn in an instant--something I'm hearing over and over here--and so you can start out in the sun but end up in a blizzard so strong you can’t see your hand in front of your face. "Brute force winds, rain, fog and even a snowstorm with almost no visibility are not uncommon," according to the Icelandic website.
Iceland really gives off that sense of ephemerality, that everything can so quickly change. The tour guide for the Katla ice cave went on about that, the country's instability as a volcanically active island, and how that instability fuels the Icelandic ethos of no excuses, how it empowers residents to live in the now.
I tossed my frozen pants over the chair to dry, thinking of all the times I'd already heard the phrase there's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes, and then sat in Bren's kitchen, slurping stew and smearing fresh bread with butter.
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